Facebook giveaways

SeanoChuinn

Hello all, hope this is correct forum for this very general query.

I'm curious, I'm seeing all of these "Like our page and win €x amount of free whatever" on Facebook posts recently. My logical brain tells me this is solely an advertising scam as such for free media coverage for the company in question on Facebook. Most of the businesses are local businesses I'm familiar with, so not a scam in the true sense of the word other than they are looking for free plugs for their business on people's pages.
So does anyone actually win anything? Could I call a business in one if the ads and ask to know who won the competition from last week?? Does anyone know anyone who's won something 😀
I'm curious though. I NEVER see a post two weeks later saying congratulations to Mary who won the competition....

Maybe I've too much idle time lol!!!

Fred Swanson

This post has been deleted.

L1011

Generally unless the prize is very low in value or has a major brand behind it, its fake.

cherryghost

Some of them are genuine. I won 2 Xbox's in a week once. Somehow.

smash

It's so you can weed out idiots from your friends list. "Bla bla shared: like and share this to win the holiday of a life time!!!"

The Randy Riverbeast

I know a local business which does competitions every week and is genuine. Although the prizes would be smaller than an iPhone or a Xbox.

There has been a few companies caught out in the past, there was a jewelers for one.

Gordon

Always be wary. I've seen loads of people like/share facebook pages that have offers from British Airways. for example.

Note - British Airways. [full stop] - not the verified BA account.

Have a look at their page, see if they have lots of historic posts, a verified account if possible, and check out their facebook url.

Darkglasses

Plenty are genuine, plenty are not.

bucketybuck

I do know somebody who has won various prizes from this type of thing, some good stuff as well!

In general though I still think most of them are scams and I would never bother myself. It depends on the company, there are some selling to small markets that couldn't survive getting caught scamming, so if its a local and specialised crowd I tend to think its genuine. Most of the rest, nah.

_Brian

Definitely stuff is given away and would it not be very risky for a plant to win the prize, the risk of the subsequent bad press wouldn't be worth taking for any business with any sense.

You can be sure if it wasn't for the companies on FB them it wouldn't exist. Technically "like and share" competitions aren't allowed but it's not really followed up on.

I know many small companies are loosing faith with FB. One is saw recently has 22k followers and their posts were only being shown to 80 followers.

Boom_Bap

Gordon wrote: »

Always be wary. I've seen loads of people like/share facebook pages that have offers from British Airways. for example.

Note - British Airways. [full stop] - not the verified BA account.

Have a look at their page, see if they have lots of historic posts, a verified account if possible, and check out their facebook url.

The full stop is always a dead give-away (pun intended). You'll also see some that are like Tesco's, not Tesco or verified.
It's a scam really, they will change their name to something else further down the line and spam you with whatever they are trying to flog.

But there are genuine ones.

seamus

Generally if it's a reputable company, it's probably genuine. Mate of mine won a free honeymoon. But they'd already booked theirs so they just used it as a pre-wedding holiday.

The rule of thumb as to whether something is legit is about the size of the prize(s) and the frequency of the competitions.

Does the company seem to be running a competition every other week with €500 or €1000 worth of stuff up for grabs? Scam.

Are they giving away an insane prize like a free car or 100 iPhones or 20 x 60-inch TVs? Scam

Is the company name branded wrong, or have odd punctuation? Names like "Tesco's", "Argos." or "Vodafone-Mobile"? Scam. A big company's facebook page will always be the exact same as the company name.

If the page is a proper business page and they're running a once-off competition that's not completely insane - like a travel agent giving away a free holiday - then you're probably good.

Cee-Jay-Cee

I think the smaller ones are genuine but what I don't get is how apparently intelligent people 'like & share' pages called 'Audi R8' with a prize of an R8 and asking idiots to choose which colour they'd like. There was one appeared on my feed recently with over 500,000 likes/shares. I usually report them as spam and in most cases FB removes the page.

Duggy747

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TESCOS.

Little every help!

Plz like an share this to win holiday of iphone 7 for prize!

Eponymous

My wife has won a few of these like and share competitions, always with local businesses, but to be honest they drive me insane, clogging up my newsfeed. I generally just block people who do it (except my wife of course!).

biko

It's a way for businesses to get eejits to share crap and annoy their friends no end.

fussyonion

I've been fairly lucky winning FB competitions.
I won €500 from Sally Hansen's page; a €100 Centra voucher, a €200 voucher for the Merrion Hotel, a hamper from Cadbury's, a €50 HMV voucher and a make-up hamper from L'Oreal.

The ones that are obviously scams are those ones from Lidl and Tesco which says "Free €200 voucher, just type Thanks Tesco/Lidl".
Lidl and Tesco have both stated they're scams and not from their official pages.

bmwguy

Didnt a car garage get caught out recently? Created a fake profile for their winner, I think it is an Audi garage or something

Which reminds me, I awoke one day to loads of friends sharing a post to win an Audi R8 (€150,000 CAR) I jokingly said to a few of them you don't think thats real do you and some of them genuinely believed it was, I don't recall any of them winning though

JustShon

It's been said before but it really does depend on the prize.

I work in digital marketing, I've run giveaways before and I randomised the winner using the random number function in excel.

If it's a huge amount of money though it's probably not real. Equally if the prize seems irrelevant to the company. From a marketing perspective you want to give away something related to your company; vouchers for your shop, one of your products etc. The hope being that you'll get a little more publicity if the person is happy with their free whatever they won and then posts about it, or if it's something they can run out of you're giving it away in the hope they'll buy a replacement from you.

Basically, use a bit of common sense.

seamus

bmwguy wrote: »

Didnt a car garage get caught out recently? Created a fake profile for their winner, I think it is an Audi garage or something

Which reminds me, I awoke one day to loads of friends sharing a post to win an Audi R8 (€150,000 CAR) I jokingly said to a few of them you don't think thats real do you and some of them genuinely believed it was, I don't recall any of them winning though

Yep: http://www.thejournal.ie/audi-galway-facebook-competition-2247318-Jul2015/

Pretty stupid of them, but a dealership can't afford to be giving away a €40,000 car to people who do nothing more than like and share a facebook page, and people should have the cop-on to realise this.

JustShon

seamus wrote: »

a dealership can't afford to be giving away a €40,000 car to people who do nothing more than like and share a facebook page, and people should have the cop-on to realise this.

Exactly. A free car / holiday / other expensive thing would always smell like scam to me but something like a €100 shopping voucher is likely to be genuine, so long as it's from a verified and reputable company page.

mahoganygas

Cee-Jay-Cee wrote: »

I think the smaller ones are genuine but what I don't get is how apparently intelligent people 'like & share' pages called 'Audi R8' with a prize of an R8 and asking idiots to choose which colour they'd like. There was one appeared on my feed recently with over 500,000 likes/shares. I usually report them as spam and in most cases FB removes the page.

I counted 14 people on my newsfeed who entered the M5 competition. :eek:

Strumms

seamus wrote: »

Yep: http://www.thejournal.ie/audi-galway-facebook-competition-2247318-Jul2015/

Pretty stupid of them, but a dealership can't afford to be giving away a €40,000 car to people who do nothing more than like and share a facebook page, and people should have the cop-on to realise this.

Totally.. they could spent 40 grand a lot more sensibly on advertising or whatever and have nobe of the bad press from the scam.

Ive never been too lucky but have one things like complimentary tickets to gigs, cinema screenings etc and events like that.

A bit of common sence as previously suggested goes a long way. People who are not very internet or indeed savvy in general can and will be caught out. Having said that some scams go into more detail then others as regards looking like an authentic FB page for X business.

The ones that annoy me and they appear at the bottom of even so called reputible sites like skynews are those paidoutbrain type things. Pure clickbait.. full of adds and headlines like ' 1000s of Irish customers can get an iphone x for 1 euro as xxx is overstocked' nonsence.

bmwguy

seamus wrote: »

Yep: http://www.thejournal.ie/audi-galway-facebook-competition-2247318-Jul2015/

Pretty stupid of them, but a dealership can't afford to be giving away a €40,000 car to people who do nothing more than like and share a facebook page, and people should have the cop-on to realise this.

Sorry, I should have been more precise. the Audi garage, which you linked to, were only offering the prize of a loan of an Audi Cabriolet for the long weekend and they couldn't even honour that and had to make a fake profile. Not a hope of a free car to keep. What followed was comical as they tried to dig themselves out of a hole when they were caught.

The Audi R8 competition was run by Audi corporate in Germany or some page claiming to be Audi, presumably to promote the new R8, but they were never giving one away, even though they claimed they were. The fact that it wasn't even based in Ireland made it impossible for Irish people to win it, VRT etc would have to be paid, insurance would be impossible, running costs prohibitive for the people that were sharing it too. But still, they believed and they liked and they shared

SeanoChuinn

Yeah its become more of an annoyance when my friends are posting this stuff and its coming up on my time line. I immediately thought "scam" but then thought maybe its not. And just wanted to pick up the phone and call one of them for pig iron to ask who won last week!! Its a chance for free advertising I guess and unfortunately there are enough stories of small wins that keep people interested in posting this stuff. I kind of feel bad though saying to people "you hardly believe they are going to give you a free **insert prize valued 15k here** do you?"

I hadn't heard about that Audi debacle. Quiet funny actually!!!

MEGA BRO WOLF 5000

I can't wait to get my 2016 Audi...or one of 100 new iPhones that can't be sold because the packaging is open.

Sir Osis of Liver.

I recently won an Audi in Galway and turned into an elderly woman who never existed anyway.

Thank you Audi Galway.

kenmc

I won a hoodie from galway hooker brewery and a T-shirt and some beer from dungarvan brewery. wife won a coat from some UK retail place and i think some sort of kids nappy changing bag or something, so yeah sometimes there are real prizes.

Fluffy Cat 88

I've won a voucher for a shoe shop, a set of glittery champagne glasses and 2 tickets to a vintage rally on Facebook. "Like and share"

My tips are - check the page is an actual business page, preferably a local one. If the prize looks too good to be true - it probably is!

I've entered comps for hampers in local chemists, costume jewellery in local gift shops, stoves in local hardware shops etc.

Another thing - the business can't tag the winner, or send private messages - check on their pages for the winners name after the closing date. It might be you!

ziedth

I won a VIP package for that Oktoberfest Beag worth about €250 IIRC for myself and 7 friends. The wife won a voucher for something or another before. I'd say in allot of cases they are a scam though.

Penny Tration

I've won probably 15 of those like and share things. Received all prizes bar two

mfceiling

seamus wrote: »

Yep: http://www.thejournal.ie/audi-galway-facebook-competition-2247318-Jul2015/

Pretty stupid of them, but a dealership can't afford to be giving away a €40,000 car to people who do nothing more than like and share a facebook page, and people should have the cop-on to realise this.

To be really honest it seems that people who like and share crap on FB are stupid.
Looking at my wife's account and the same people who like and share stuff will also....click to hate cancer, wish they could spend one more day with someone in heaven, post rubbish under a picture of a minnion, post inspirational quotes and generally divulge the most boring, inane rubbish from their lives.

But hey, that's what you do to win a €10,000 voucher for "Mark and Spencers"